Boston police: Photos turned tide

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview published Sunday that the authorities releasing photos of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects “forced them out of their hideout” and spurred them into action — including the deadly Thursday night car chase.

“It forced them out of their hideout and they decided to commit further violent acts. But it’s my belief that they were already manufacturing explosive devices. Further violent acts were inevitable,” Davis told The Boston Globe.

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Police pursued Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, in a car chase Thursday night into early Friday morning. The older brother was killed during the chase while the younger brother got away. He was eventually captured later Friday. During the police chase, Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier was killed.

The suspects “were not making those explosives for nothing,” Davis told The Globe. “There was a plan there, and I believe that tragically [Collier] lost his life, but he was truly protecting the citizens of the city.”

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told The Washington Post in an interview public Saturday that the younger brother’s reaction to the bombings — caught on video recordings and in photographs — was one of the clues that helped investigators.

“[It was] highly incriminating,” Patrick told The Post, “a lot more than the public knows.”

Authorities told The Post that another reason they released those photographs Thursday was to keep the investigation focused on the right suspects — and not falsely accused suspects in photographs published on social media sites like Reddit or on the cover of The New York Post.